EspaiDer3 is a project that derives from previous work (projecte3) carried out with a group of 3rd and 4th year secondary school students from the Joanot Martorell institute in Esplugues de Llobregat. projecte3 proposed that a group of students analyze the school institution and propose spatial models and alternative content for the school, under an educational logic in which the voice and knowledge of the students themselves had a place.
EspaiDer3* proposes to a group of young people from the neighborhoods of Can Vidalet (Esplugues de Llobregat) and Pubilla Casas (L’Hospitalet) constituted as Associació Juvenil EspaiDer3, to collectively build and manage a center of a cultural, social and leisure nature, with a program of activities aimed at other young people in the neighborhood and open to citizen participation. EspaiDer3 is articulated as a learning community insofar as it bases its «educational» action on the collective transformation of public space and the social environment.
The first phase of rehabilitation of the prefabricated modules that form the habitable core of the future EspaiDer3* was carried out during the days of February 28 and 29, and March 1 and 2, 2008, with the invaluable collaboration of numerous people interested in the project, during the customization workshop led by Santiago Cirugeda and Catarqsis; EspaiDer3* is a proposal by LaFundició with the participation of the EspaiDer3* youth association and in collaboration with this group of architects.
The EspaiDer3* association aims to create a physical space and an associative framework in which young people can participate autonomously in decision-making processes that directly concern them and allow them to play an active and proactive role in the public life of their immediate environment. As an organizing entity, LaFundició collaborates with and advises the association in the self-construction and management of this space.
The aim was to abandon the ‘assistance’ or ‘service’ paradigm to establish a horizontal area of collaboration between LaFundició and the young participants so that they go from being ‘users’ to ‘co-managers’. To enable a platform, resources and tools (material, intellectual and legal) that allow young people to have a direct and effective impact (not only symbolic) on public space and on the «construction of the city».
Critical thinking and action must start from the analysis of the mechanisms of discrimination and domination that lie at the base of social inequalities in order to arrive at transformative proposals that start from the young people themselves.
Self-construction and self-organization by young people are understood in themselves as the main ¿»pedagogical»? means. These processes include making decisions about the design of EspaiDer3 itself, participation in its construction during the different phases, on what the bodies and the system of government of the association should be, as well as the activities that could have been carried out. The members of the association met periodically in a participatory assembly and decisions were made by consensus.
From LaFundició we propose to articulate the programming of EspaiDer3 around two «thematic axes»:
Territory Observatory: Includes all those activities that take the immediate urban and social context as a field of research and/or action. This area would include all activities related to audiovisual documentation, field work (interviews, routes through the neighborhood…) and the analysis and post-production of these materials.
Artistic and Educational Laboratory: Includes all activities programmed in relation to creativity and learning. At the same time, we propose to explore the possibilities of artistic practice as a means of transforming the environment. This area would include possible exchanges with groups or initiatives that work in the same line of self-management of knowledge and organization.
In general terms, the idea was to use EspaiDer3* as a meeting place, archive and, in the long term, office. At the same time, it was contemplated to organize specific activities making use of different spaces, institutional or not, in the neighborhood, thus establishing contact with other agents and groups and «colonizing» spaces that are not usually used by young people.
